Thomas MacMillan Photo
As he ate his chicken salad lunch, Kevin Walsh peered over at another man sitting in Pitkin Plaza on Orange Street, a quiet, thoughtful chap who seemed to have a message: All great thinkers were seen as dunces once. Including Walsh.
Walsh took that message from a new sculpture that has appeared in the plaza, on the east side of Orange Street, between Chapel and Court Streets.
A Boston artist has installed the sculpture as part of the 12th annual Ideat Village, the freewheeling, scrappy alternative to the glossy scene at the International Festival of Arts and Ideas. Both festivals hit the city concurrently in the latter half of June.
For a dozen years, Ideat Village has had a stick figure wearing a dunce cap as a mascot. This year, village organizer Bill Saunders commissioned a new mascot sculpture from Boston artist Stephen deFilippis, who crafted a version of Rodin’s iconic “Thinker.”
Newly installed on his pensive perch in Pitkin Plaza, deFilippis’ creation provided food for thought during a Monday afternoon lunch break.
Walsh (pictured), who’s a carpenter, offered an interpretation of the fact that a dunce cap that rests incongruously atop the thinker’s head. “Most really good thinkers were perceived as dunces,” he said.
Time was, for instance, that conventional wisdom said the world was flat, Walsh noted. Anyone who thought otherwise would have been thought an idiot.
“I’ll give you an example from my own life,” Walsh said. Two winters ago, when New Haven saw record snowfalls, Walsh started worrying about the snow piling up on his roof. He put up scaffolding, climbed on top of his house and shoveled it off.
His neighbors thought he was crazy, Walsh said. He was seen as “a lunatic with a death wish.”
Two weeks later he had become “a visionary.” Everyone began to see the danger of roof collapse. They went out and bought roof rakes. People started climbing up on roofs and shoveling. It was suddenly a sensible thing to do.
Ryan Meagher and Katie Langan greet the thinker.
Andy Buccaro, a therapist who works near the plaza, also spent some time with the thinker Monday. He puffed a cigarette in the sculpture’s silent company.
“He’s a non-smoker,” Buccaro observed. “Good for him.”
It’s probably best for everyone that he doesn’t smoke, considering the “flammable” warning on the side of the thinker’s oil-drum seat.
Darice Gall, walking by with a bag of groceries, was one of several passersby who made a connection with the Wizard of Oz’s Tin Man. “I thought it was going to jump up and start dancing,” she said.
“It’s cool,” she said. “He’s keeping watch on all the thinkers in the area.”
Gall admired the recycling of old oil drums.
“It’s all recycled. Nothing was bought for the piece,” said deFilippis, reached by phone from Boston, where he runs an auto body shop. “Everything I get from my work I recycle for my art.”
DeFilippis said his intention is for the sculpture to be a commentary on oil use. “It’s supposed to resemble the thinking man, and he’s made out of oil drums. The thought behind it is, it’s a spin on the thinking man with the whole thing with oil and the price of gas. It has to do with that. … He’s in thought about if this big mess with oil is worth it with the prices, with the war, with all of that.”
This isn’t the first time deFilippis has contributed to Ideat Village a sculpture sampled from the canon of classic works. Three years ago he delivered a welded-metal version of Michaelangelo’s David to the plaza along with a supply of spray paint. “I told everyone to grab a can and go to it.” The piece was soon covered with colorful embellishments as onlookers became paint-wielding collaborators.
Jay Dockendorf File Photo
David returned the following year. The sculptor has a New Haven connection: He’s friends with the artist Katro Storm.
DeFilippis said he’s open to people painting on the thinker, although he didn’t make it with that end in mind, and didn’t furnish spray paint this year.
“If they want to write on it, they can,” he said. “I like that whole idea. With sculpture, the colors don’t matter much. It’s more the form. If people want to paint on it, that’s fine with me.”
The artist’s attitude stands in marked contrast with the reaction prompted when people painted recently on another new piece of public art in town. Read about that here.
Around the corner from Pitkin Plaza, the thinker’s predecessor mascot — dubbed Galvan Ometer — was lying in state in the window of the Ideat Village’s gallery space on Court Street.
A toe tag indicated that he had only recently passed, on June 16, a victim of “death my misadventure.”
Saunders said the new mascot is named Therm. He’s a relative of Galvan, apparently. They share the last name of Ometer. “He’s taking the temperature of everyone.”
Saunders said Therm is here to stay. “He’s bolted down. We’ll see what happens.”
Saunders hadn’t asked the city if he could install a new sculpture permanently in the plaza. “Don’t ask for permission. Ask for forgiveness later.”
Tony Bialecki, deputy economic development director for the city, said he took a look at the sculpture after the city was asked for comment by the Independent. He said he talked to Saunders and “explained to him its not a good idea to go bolting things into the ground on public property without permission.”
Bialecki said the piece doesn’t seem to be a danger to people, as a tripping hazard or being at risk of toppling over. He did find a sharp edge that he said Saunders agreed to file down. And he tried to impress upon Saunders, “Don’t do anymore and don’t do it again.”
The piece will have to be removed at the end of Ideat Village, Bialecki said. If Saunders wants it to remain permanently, he can fill out an application for approval, Bialecki said.
